Child Education Centres Support Improvements

Child Education Centres Support Improvements

Early Child Care Centres Support Improvements in Regulation

The largest representative body of licensed early childhood centres in New Zealand (with more than 1000 community and commercially owned centre members) has hailed Government reductions in early childhood bureaucracy as ‘prudent and sensible’.

Following a Government announcement today (01 July) the Early Childhood Council (ECC) said there had been, in recent years, growing alarm in the early childhood sector that centres were over regulated, that excessive paper work was diverting attention from children, and that one-size-fits-all regulation was forcing ‘sameness’ upon very different sorts of centres.

Council CEO Sarah Farquhar said today’s announcements gave hope to the sector that relief was in sight.

She said today’s changes ended sleep rules that ‘would have forced all centres with under two year olds to have sleep rooms closed off from the rest of the centre, violating Maori and Pasifika sleep traditions, and forcing community centres, with landlords who did not want new rooms in their buildings, to abandon the care of children under the age of two’.

Dr Farquhar welcomed also the abolition of a new requirement for centres to re-license every six years. All centres were already assessed rigorously by the Education Review Office, she said, with all ERO assessments publicly available. An additional requirement for centres to re-license every six years was ‘a waste of time and money better spent on the education and care of children’.

ENDS

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